The Witcher FAQ

This FAQ is intended for the fans who have enjoyed, played and finished The Witcher at least once, and are now wondering what quests, and other goodies they may have missed. In short, the FAQ is written for those that want to get more out of the game!

Note: I am assuming you more or less know how the game works, i.e. you learned the basics from playing The Witcher. If you want to be informed of things that go beyond "just winning the game", keep reading.

The FAQ makes extensive use of The Witcher Wiki, mainly highlighting things of note. Should you miss specific details, feel free to check with the wiki, it is quite content complete.

Contents

Should you have played several other RPGs, here you will find a compact summary of how The Witcher works:

Basically you talk to NPCs (quest givers), solve quests, gain experience (XP), level up (character build), loot, trade, read books to learn about monsters / plants, explore the world, and progress in the storyline like in any other RPG. But there are quite a few differences...

The most important player stat is Vitality (zero health means death), together with Endurance, and both luckily automatically regenerate over time. So, in theory you would not have to consume anything to replenish either, like the normally typical health and mana potions.

Geralt can meditate at fireplaces or other safe locations (inns). Several hours of meditation replenish Vitality, Endurance, and also cure Toxicity (poisoning after drinking contests, or the intake of several potions), plus perform Alchemy.

To slightly replenish health, Geralt can eat food.

Drinking bottled water restores Endurance.

During combat these regeneration methods are usually too slow, the witcher needs to drink potions.

Merchants will keep everything you sell them in their inventory, letting you buy back items, if need be. This seems to be true only for the current Chapter though. Rare items in their inventory may return into stock after some time, after a day or so.

The game makes it very difficult to earn additional money by trading goods, since your sell price is only 1/5th of what you need to pay to buy it (e.g. ingredients, weapons). Only valuables like jewellery (e.g. diamonds) have a better buy/sell ratio of 2:1.

You should be aware that anything that falls to the floor (e.g. Remains) will disappear once you leave the area (load screen) to then return. Especially fighting many foes, you can only pick up a maximum two weapons (three towards the end)! For exceptions, see The Witcher FAQ/Character#Storage opportunities.

Again differing from other RPGs, the collected plants will grow back after a relatively short time. This means unlimited plant resources.

Items in chests (loot) stay there until you empty the chest. These items do not respawn. Exception: Between the Chapters II and III loot in e.g. chests reappears again.

Alas, it is not possible to stow away excess items from the Inventory in normal chests. But you can store them with e.g. an Innkeeper. Magically, any person with such a storage option will let you access your goods, even beyond the chapter limits. For more information, see The Witcher FAQ/Character#Storage opportunities.

The Witcher has a 24-hour time cycle (accelerated compared to real time), so you will experience sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight. Note: At night you will stumble into dangerous opponents, even in Vizima. Also note some NPCs will only appear at certain times in the day, e.g. at noon.

24 hours in-game (one virtual day) are equivalent to 1 hour 36 minutes in the real world. For an hour to pass in-game you need to wait 4 minutes. The time scale factor is 15.

Some quests require the witcher to be present at a certain location at a specific time, this does not pertain to the day though. So you can visit the location several in-game days or even weeks later.

The main NPCs usually have unique green names floating above their heads, marking them as potential quest givers. Other NPCs with generic blue names, like Townswoman, normally only spout one phrase, but otherwise are used as decoration.

To make things more complicated some of the latter NPCs actually do have quests or untracked tasks for you. E.g. a peasant women in the Outskirts wanting a certain flower type (Romance card).

So talk to everyone you meet, even when they have a generic name. And talk to them more than once.

After solving a quest for a quest giver, be sure to talk to them again, they may have additional information or another quest.

Solving a main quest, can have repercussions on some of the other NPCs, thus it can be quite rewarding to talk to them again.

To make it easier for the player to detect new dialogue options, when talking to NPCs, all new dialogues are highlighted in blue, old dialogues are greyed out.